Time to start the April Fools Day festivities.
Betsy DeVos said at Brookings that she is “not a numbers person,” to explain her ignorance of research about the poor results of charters and vouchers.
Dissident employees within the U.S. Department of Education have a Twitter account, where they responded to her comment:
“Or a letters person, or a schools person, or a teachers person, or an education person. Quit 👏🏽 Your 👏🏽 Job 👏🏽
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The stories she tells are carefully chosen to promote her political agenda, which is public funding of private schools:
“One example is Marilyn Rhames and her daughter.
Some of you may have read Marilyn’s firsthand account.
When Marilyn taught at their neighborhood school, she enrolled her oldest daughter there to remind herself to treat her students as if each of them was one of her own kids.
When she tried to raise objections with the school as a parent, she was fired as a teacher. So she took a job at a charter school and brought her daughter with her. Marilyn’s oldest daughter graduated from the charter school, but her youngest daughter was struggling there.
She considered the neighborhood school again, but that school failed to meet the family’s needs.
Marilyn finally found an independent, classical private school that she says could celebrate her daughter’s heritage while instilling the academic discipline needed to succeed. Marilyn wrote that while she may wish her tax dollars went to a rigorous district school that could fit her child’s needs, the fact is that they simply haven’t. In her own words, “Siding with my child is an unalienable right … My only real school choice right now is private.”
For Marilyn, there was really only one choice that allowed her to meet her daughter’s needs. The index may have given Chicago a B score, but can we really claim that Marilyn had plenty of quality options?”
Every single speech or public appearance is like this. It’s all she does- she bashes public schools and promotes private schools.
Apparently the Secretary of the US Department of Education is unable to find a single public school parent or student who are happy with a public school. Not one.
Here’s a number she won’t mention. The total spending on K-12 private schools in the US is 60 billion. Devos and ed reform plan to boost that by a third, by 20 billion.
That is a HUGE boost. They’re planning on increasing private school enrollment by 1/3, in one fell swoop and they’re planning it with zero public debate and zero input from the public schools that will be directly affected.
Here’s DeVos on whether public schools will be harmed by her anti-public school approach:
Separately, the report argues that “There is no question that alternatives to the traditional school district model are destructive of the traditional school district model.”
“Many would read this and conclude that such alternatives (or choices) are destructive of traditional public schools and of the students they serve. But I would argue that these alternatives are constructive, not destructive, for students, parents and teachers.
Let me offer this example from a different part of our daily lives.
How many of you got here today in an Uber, or Lyft, or another ridesharing service? Did you choose that because it was more convenient than hoping a taxi would drive by? Even if you didn’t use a ridesharing service, I’m sure most of you at least have the app on your phone.”
She dispenses with public schools completely by offering a hackneyed Uber comparison.
That’s an example of the amount of thought that is going into the privatization plan.
In edreformworld, the schools that 90% of kids attend are just a dying industry that must die to make way for their new model, no matter that kids are actually IN these schools and no one in the public has any idea they’re slated for destruction.
This discussion about the fate of public schools taking place in DC? Public schools aren’t invited.
What I love is the dishonest insistence she is an “agnostic” when every single story she tells about a public school is negative and every single story she tells about a charter or private school is positive. This is true across ed reform, by the way. Public schools are consistently depicted as scary, dangerous places where no one learns anything:
“His name is Michael B. Michael grew up in East Hartford, Connecticut, in a low-income neighborhood. He was an average student throughout elementary and middle school, but that all changed when he started ninth grade at the district high school.
Michael described a school where students were the real ones in charge of the class, and they would make it impossible for the teachers to teach.
He was constantly bullied and became afraid of even using the bathroom at school. This constant fear made him hate school and made it impossible for him to focus on learning. He said, and I quote, “It was nothing more than adult day care … a dangerous daycare.”
But, even though he was failing, the school still gave him passing grades – D-minuses – and so he felt that he was no better than a D-minus student.”
I mean, come on. Give me a break. This is deliberate. It’s intended to promote private schools and drive people away from public schools.
When DeVos was doing this the last 30 years on her own dime it was fine- it’s her ideological mission and if she wants to spend her own money on it she can.
Now that she’s a public employee it’s government propaganda directed against public schools. I resent paying for it.
We all knew this was going to happen, right?
DC is obsessed with vouchers under Trump in the same way they were obsessed with charters under Obama.
The schools they’re not at all interested in? Public schools. This has been a constant in ed reform for 20 years. It is fundamentally a “movement” that has little or no interest in existing public schools, other than to hold meetings and conventions reciting the failures of public schools.
There was never a positive ed reform agenda for public schools. The goal was always to get rid of them.
Sadly, the following is no joke.
In D.C., the nation has a right wing agenda operating on both sides of the aisle. The Center for American Progress, took $2.2 mil. from Gates (Curmuducation wrote about CAP’s right wing, education agenda, awhile ago). CAP was founded by John Podesto, infamous for Hilary’s campaign failure.
Two weeks after the election, an article written by CAP staffers was published in Forbes. The similarities of the CAP plan to Rubio’s legislation, introduced last month, that mandates substitution of college accreditation, should be noted by everyone in higher education.
A video was widely available, before the Presidential election, that showed Podesto, on a dais with the school privatizing Jeb Bush and Chester Finn. Podesto called on donors to support the candidates of ed reform (the self-anointed richest 0.1%).
“Deformers know the Number”
Deformer knows the number
That really means the most
Pretending to be dumber
To passify the host
The number is the fraction
Of budget to be grazed
By parasitic faction
On public that is dazed
Actually, she is number$ per$on, obsessed with number of dollars made off vouchers, tax breaks and other handouts to corporations and the obscenely wealthy like herself.
Poet,
When she says she is “not a numbers person,” what she means is she is not quite sure how many billions the family has, or whether to count her billions separately from those of other family members. You see how easy it is to get overwhelmed by numbers?
One word: DITZ.
Look at the companies that Family owns, case closed.